When the Media Co-opts the Goddess

I’d love to see a viral demand that the media STOP using the name of a goddess for the murderous tribe of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The myth of Isis is one of devotion, love and legacy. To use her name for a vicious group of men highlights a lack of discernment in our present media and the tendency to distill everything down to a twitter bite.

We now talk in code and few of us take the time to really comb different news sources to research a situation. To be fair, the amount of information out there and the distracting articles and posts are overwhelming. We have to dig deep to find the pieces that are not mainstream broadcast.

Whether conscious or not, to choose the acronym ISIS has symbolic meaning, even through its distortion.

Isis is her Greek/modern name; she was Aset in Egypt “queen of the throne”. She was known and revered throughout the peninsula and delta as the great goddess of love and childbirth. Since the lineage of the pharaohs was often matrilineal, the power of the feminine was honored through Isis. Her priestesses were midwives and healers.

To use her name for a group of assassins is an affront for everything the goddess Isis symbolized.

There is no goddess that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant values.

What is truly arresting about the destruction of this part of the world, (which has been going on since long before the Iraq invasion) is that it is the cradle of civilization. Every thread of western civilization initiated in this womb of humankind. This is where writing began, mathematics, libraries and political systems. If we obliterate our past, what does it bode for our futures?

Isis is one of the oldest goddesses. Her myth traveled and morphed into different cultures. Her stories have many versions, began before the written word. Isis is pivotal in one the great myths of resurrection, which is valuable to consider at this time.

Isis was the wife of Osiris, the god of the underworld and merciful judge of the dead. He was considered the granter of life, the creator of vegetation and the source of the Nile’s bountiful powers of fertilization. His brother Set was jealous of Osiris and plotted his assassination with a team of accomplices. They managed to trick Osiris into a beautiful sarcophogus and toss him into the Nile.

Isis began a tireless search for her dead husband and upon finding his corpse, hid it and sought a way to bring him back. But Set had her followed. In his fury that his dead brother had been found, he promptly dismembered the corpse. He scattered the body pieces throughout the Nile. Isis then trolled the Nile in search of the pieces of her spouse. Her story is one of loyalty, love and healing. She is a goddess who puts the pieces together.

I am writing this on September 11. To have a personal association with this date is not dissimilar to my musings on Isis. In the same way that babies have been named after the goddess of love, people have been born on this day. My uncle and aunt were married on this date; I have Facebook friends who celebrate a birthday today.

In other words, there are people throughout the planet that have reasons to love 9/11 even though it is a date that conjures sadness and anger. They cannot change when they were born, married or began an enterprise. There are people who love the name Isis, because it is their name, their child’s, the river that flows by them or the song that was playing when they met the beloved.

When you hear or read the name Isis, let the 4-letter word in your head be LOVE and not fear. I have decided not to be angry about the name of the goddess being used by the media in this distorted manner; bringing in the goddess may be a stealth method to dismantle the death machine.

I look forward to a public demand, perhaps even by the team of extremist assassins themselves, that the moniker ISIS is unsuitable for them. May LOVE prevail.

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2 Comments

Tamara Henderson
on September 13, 2014 at 9:06 am

Looks as if even acronyms are being shortened, and the media now seems to be referring to the organization as simple IS….. which is not a comforting thought, either… hoping more along the lines of HASBEEN.